Clarendon House Publications

17/10/2025

Your weekly newsletter is here!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/your-weekly-newsletter-is-here-157

17/10/2025

Writing fiction tends to begin with images. Writers pick up images from other books, from films, from life, and these manifest themselves in the imagination (‘Imagination’ could be called a ‘nation of images’) until they seem to take on a life of their own. They want to escape; they press themselves against the doors of a writer’s mind, urging their way towards freedom.

What usually happens next is that, if a writer gets the time to open those doors, these images pour out onto paper or a screen in a chaotic tumble of ‘this-happened-then-this-happened-then-this-happened…’ until that initial ‘tumbling energy’ wears off. This normally occurs pretty quickly, within a chapter or two of writing. The images lose momentum, they begin to wander. The writer begins to wonder. Specifically, the writer wonders: What should happen next? Where is the story going?

Writing fiction tends to begin with images. Writers pick up images from other books, from films, from life, and these manifest themselves in the imagination (‘Imagination’ could be called a ‘nation of images’) until they seem to take on a life of their own. They want to escape; they press th...

16/10/2025

Often a question arises on writers’ forums: ‘How should I use the backstory of a character?’ This goes along with questions about whether or not a backstory should be fully developed or be only partly known by the writer.

Often a question arises on writers’ forums: ‘How should I use the backstory of a character?’ This goes along with questions about whether or not a backstory should be fully developed or be only partly known by the writer. Answers range from ‘Yes, have a filing cabinet full of information abo...

15/10/2025

[email protected]

15/10/2025

As writers, we have probably heard the advice ‘Show, don’t tell’. It’s worth closely examining why this advice is prevalent and why it is so popular. We might also discover why it doesn’t always apply…

As writers, we have probably heard the advice ‘Show, don’t tell’. It’s worth closely examining why this advice is prevalent and why it is so popular. We might also discover why it doesn’t always apply. We can imagine a spectrum with pure ‘Telling’ at one end and pure ‘Showing’ at t...

14/10/2025

NEW RELEASE FROM CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS!
THE SHATTERED STONE by ALEXANDER MARSHALL
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/alexander-marshall
High in the Absaroka Range of the wild territory of Wyoming, Red Valley became the home of three great families, the Castletons, the Malmouths - and the Kings, who took the narrow land around High Gulch, amongst the peaks.

But when Victoria King’s father Matt dies, her whole world begins to unravel - what she thought was her home is soon left far behind as she is pursued across snowy mountains and through dark, twisting valleys by evil men, focused on one thing: possessing her, and through her the whole valley. Strange, half-savage men, wild, half-demonic bears, and a man who has no heart at all await her on the road, and much more besides…

Join Victoria King, her loyal partner Abe Stone, the peculiar wild man Old Laramie, Captain Stirling and others on a ride you will never forget into 1880s Wyoming, where the only real law is written by the bullet…
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/alexander-marshall

This is a rip-roaring, fast-paced, thrill-a-minute Western adventure from the pen of Alexander Marshall, author of the fantasy epic The Sword Sundergost, plus The Phantom Sword of Rondar, The Return of Captain Invincible, Spectrebrood, The Hand of Psion and many others!

Grab your paperback or Kindle copy here:
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/alexander-marshall

14/10/2025

In How Stories Really Work, the term ‘Irony’ is used to describe a whole genre of fiction. It has very particular characteristics in comparison to the other three basic genres, Epic, Tragedy and Comedy, and knowing what these attributes are is a powerful thing when it comes to understanding fiction as a whole…

In How Stories Really Work, the term ‘Irony’ is used to describe a whole genre of fiction. It has very particular characteristics in comparison to the other three basic genres, Epic, Tragedy and Comedy, and knowing what these attributes are is a powerful thing when it comes to understanding fict...

13/10/2025

Independently publishing your book can be a daunting process, but there is hope. Of all the data and requirements you’re bombarded with, about 85% of it is now possible to handle very easily through online publishing, as you will discover. Though you are entering a marketplace in which literally millions of books are published in various formats around the world each year, the good news is that there is plenty of good news.

The job of a publisher, though, is to turn a good manuscript into a great book.

You probably haven’t thought of yourself as a publisher at all. You are burning with the desire to create effects upon readers and the mechanics of getting a finished work into readers’ hands probably wasn’t part of your vision. The process needs to be broken down a little so that you can see the different functions involved.

If you want to independently publish your work, it follows that you must become an independent publisher - the clue is in the name.

How exactly do you do that?

Independently publishing your book can be a daunting process, but there is hope. Of all the data and requirements you’re bombarded with, about 85% of it is now possible to handle very easily through online publishing, as you will discover. Though you are entering a marketplace in which literally m...

11/10/2025

In finishing your story, you are trying to do two basic things:

1. Make the ending seem like the consequence of everything that has happened so far - in other words, not suddenly resolve everything by have it ‘all be a dream’ or have events occur which make no sense in the context of what the reader has come to see as the story’s world

and

2. Surprise the reader.

This can be a tricky act to pull off, especially with audiences and readers growing more and more sophisticated as they are exposed to far more fiction than was the case, say, fifty years ago.

Details of how this is done are given in How Stories Really Work, but here’s a summary…

In finishing your story, you are trying to do two basic things: 1. Make the ending seem like the consequence of everything that has happened so far - in other words, not suddenly resolve everything by have it ‘all be a dream’ or have events occur which make no sense in the context of what the re...

10/10/2025

Your weekly newsletter is here!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/single-post/your-weekly-newsletter-is-here-156

10/10/2025

ISSUE # 81 IS HERE!
THE INNER CIRCLE WRITERS' MAGAZINE!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/magazine
In this very exciting 81st issue, we get to catch up with the dynamic Egyptian author Riham Adly, as well as go on a journey into Brontë country, and find out what advice thirteen famous authors have to give about writing.
Plus we begin several new features: ‘The Railway Children’ by E. E. Nesbit starts on page 60, and we delve deep into how the imagination works in the first instalment of our series based on the book Fictivity, as well taking a look at what NOT to do when marketing your book in the series The Laws of Spamming!
Master Author Showcase features a magical tale by fantasy legend Lord Dunsany, and there are submission opportunities, gifts and a quiz!
Enjoy!
https://www.clarendonhousebooks.com/magazine

10/10/2025

If you are really serious about wanting to make a living from writing, there are five hard-hitting bits of advice that you probably need to confront…

If you are really serious about wanting to make a living from writing, there are five hard-hitting bits of advice that you probably need to confront: 1. You have to write stories that people want to read. It’s not good enough - though it’s unquestionably a start - simply to ‘write’. You must...